TOPICS OF THE DAY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1214, 7 June 1895, Page 11

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE LONDON SCANDAL. From Our Special Correspondent. London, April 19. The Master of Baliol was one day conversing on ethics. His friend propounded what he believed to be a difficult question. “Do you think," said he, “ that a good man could ever look happy on the rack ?" “'Well," replied Jowett, with a judicial aii«* “ I think, on the whole, he might—that is if he were a very good man and it werAa very bad rack." I have quoted the foregoing because it seems singularly apropos to the attitude of the press towards Oscar Wilde just now. Not content with complaining that Mr Wilde looks miserable on the rack at the police court, they invite us to infer his guilt from the fact. How they would have him look 1 can’t imagine. Even the most blameless of beings might be excused for displaying considerable emotion whilst listening to such infamous allegations as those- of the self-confessed blackmailers, Parker and Atkins. One wouldn’t hang a dog on the word of these unutterable vermin, and if the case rested on their depositions alone Wilde would soon be free. But there are many other witnesses, hotel-keepers, chamber-maids, landladies and fellow-lodgers of Taylor’s proteges, who are welding together a chain of circumstantial evidence which Sir Edward Clarke (who will conduct the defence) may find it impossible to destroy. Unless forced to do so by circumstances it is not the intention of the Government to drag Lord Alfred Douglas into this unpleasant business, though the evidence shows him to have been present at most of Oscar’s peculiar symposiums. The smart London tradesmen and hotel-keepers are even sadder than the aesthetes over the fall of the apostle of culture. He owed money everywhere, though earning a big income nowadays from His plays. But only a millionaire’s resources would have stood such extravagance as his. A dinner at the Savoy seldom cost him less than L’4o, and I am told his small party’s bill at the Holborn Viaduct Hotel for the three days concluding the Queensberry trial amounted to £l5O odd. Three writs were found on him when he was arrested. A PHILOSOPHIC MORAL. There is a philosophic moral to the Wilde case which some of us may do well not to overlook. Oscar was not always the combination of artist and brute he is to-day. Walter Pater was his evil genius. It was that accomplished stylist’s gospel of epicureanism (carried to excess) which has landed him in the dock. Wilde’s case is the natural and regular physiological result of a literary and aesthetic effort. It demonstrates the influence which the deviation of certain literary faculties in the direction of a refined sensualism can exercise over the intelligence and over the morals of men undoubtedly gifted. Fatal degeneration will ensue when intellectual effort i 3 made the result and not the principle of sensations. FINALLY. Finally, for Heaven’s sake don’t let us be humbugs about this Wilde trial. Mr Jerome points out in his own pleasant

fashion that while everybody has been

loudly eulogising the St. James's Gazette for not reporting the Wilde case, nobody has been observed reading that rigidly virtuous journal. It was just the same at the time of the “ Maiden Tribute." Wo howled with horror at Stead’s filthy narrative and eagerly bought every fresh issue of the Fall Mall Gazette containing it. Moreover society will do well to remember that there may be such a thing as over-reticence. In our desire not to touch pitch and get defiled, we decent people have speechlessly conspired together not to see the facts which have led at last to this esclandre. In doing so we absolutely protected the gang. What society now demands is the absolute extinction of the Oscarian cult. This can only be achieved by putting deadly fear into the hearts of two or three hundred well-known characters, and to manage the work •efficiently a certain amount of publicity is imperatively necessary. THE NEW SPEAKER. Perhaps the greatest compliment the House of Commons could have paid to the late Speaker was the scene —almost amounting to serious disorder —which occurred during the election of his successor. The chair stood empty for barely two hours, but that was quite long enough to emphasise the loss of the strong guiding hand. And here let me say a word or two regarding Mr Peel’s farewell. Mr Lucy’s account which I sent you last week does justice to its matter, but scarcely gives a fair idea of its admirable manner. The speech was in the first place judiciously brief and couched in excellent taste and felicitous language. Its delivery was perfect. Mr Peel inherits from his father the beautiful and exquisitely modulated voice which enabled the repealer of the -5 Corn Laws to —in the words of Disraeliplay with the House of Commons as on an old fiddle, and this voice was never heard to greater advantage than in his valedictory address. The disturbance on Wednesday was due entirely to Mr Balfour, whose tact, temper and self-control for once entirely gave way. Till the Tory leader, contrary to all precedent, intervened, the election of the Speaker had progressed on conventional lines. Mr Whitbread proposed Mr Gully. And who, I hear some of you colonists ask, is Mr Whitbread ? In the words of these two diametrically opposed authorities “ Tay Pay " O’Connor and the St James's Gazette , “Probably the most respected man in the House.” Liberals, Tories, Irishmen and Free Lances alike have long recognised bis sterling worth and capabilities. Offered office on many occasions he has always refused it, and eleven years ago the House would—but for the honourable member’s slight deafness—have unanimously elected him Speaker. In appearance the personification of grave dignity and blessed with a singularly gracious manner and considerable oratorical powers Mr Whitbread yet seldom speaks. When he does his influence falls little, if at all, short of a party leader’s. I commend to your notice the simple, earnest, self-restrained sentences in which the veteran parliamentarian proposed Mr Gully. It could not possibly have been better done. Mr Augustine Burrell's little speech was also in quiet good taste, and

Sir John Mowbray and Mr Wharton in proposing Sir Matthew White Ridley likewise showed to much advantage. Then the two candidates submitted themselves to the House, Mr Gully making the best speech and looking a more ideal Speaker than tho stout and short Sir Matthew.

Up to this point harmony had reigned, and what demon of mischief prompted Mr Balfour to defy precedent and interpose no one could imagine. His speech was so unlike him too. He made no direct attack on Mr Gully, but managed to stiggest he was an undesirable man for the post. That might have passed. When, however, the right honourable gentleman went on to accuse the Government of .reducing the question of the Speakership to a party fight, the Chamber rang with cries of “ Courtney, Courtney, Courtney." This of course signified that so far from having made a party business of the Speakership, the Government had suggested the obviously suitable Mr Courtney—though a Liberal Unionist—for the post, and Mr Balfour himself had joined Mr Chamberlain in persuading that gentleman to withdraw. For once Mr Balfour was completely knocked over and—sat down. The cheers and howls which greeted Sir William Harcourt’s rising showed that the blood of the House was up, and quieter souls gazed with melancholy foreboding on the empty chair. Sir William was in great form and danced a sort of breakdown on the Opposition leader. Mr Balfour’s objections to Mr Gully were confuted cut of the mouth of his own side. In the P.M.G. of the previous night appeared an article by that clever young Tory, Sir Herbert Maxwell, who showed conclusively that in 1884 Mr Peel was as unknown and as severely criticised by the Tories as Mr Gully is (or was) now. “ It is," says “ Tay Pay " (of whose description of what followed I must even at the risk of repetition quote a bit)," the peculiarity of an orator —and especially of an orator of the impressionable temperature of Sir William Harcourt —to rise with the rising tide, to grow stronger with strength, more successful with success. And soon it was felt that Sir William was about to make a weightier, stronger, even more emphatic attack on Mr Balfour. In other words, he was approaching the name of Mr Courtney. “The reader will have already seen what a frightful opening Mr Balfour had left on this question, when he charged the Government with making the Speakership a party question by bringing forward one of their own followers. Who had made it a party question, asked Sir William Harcourt, with finger pointed at Mr Balfour —and in a loud and almost menacing voice—and with all the force of a piledriver, giving the huge block of wood its last stroke home. The Chancellor felt all the passion he expressed and aroused ; for it is well known that he had put forward the candidature of Mr Courtney with great and almost desperate eagerness, and in spite of some opposition from his own friends. If Mr Courtney, who was not a supporter of the Government, had not been elected, whose was the responsibility ? Again, Sir William pointed at Mr Balfour; and so fierce and loud, and prompt, was the storm of cheers that

came up from the Liberals and the Irish that Sir William was unable more than once to end his sentences. All the sense of the ingratitude, the betrayal, the meanness, with which Mr Courtney had been hustled out of the Speakership by the Tories, came back to the memory of the House; never was a man so deeply avenged, never was a mean intrigue so mercilessly exposed. MR BALFOUR AND MR CHAMBERLAIN. “Mr Chamberlain is always pale ; and in these later days he nearly always looks sour, depressed, baffled, uneasy. He was positively and palpably miserable during this exposure of—shall I call it an intrigue or a defeat ?—in which he has played so ignoble a part; and what must have added to his discomfort was the fact that Mr Courtney sat beside him—self-restrained and decorous, but still unable to conceal the natural smile of triumph at his tardy but emphatic vindication after the knifing by his foes and his treacherous friends. But the effect on Mr Balfour was more striking than even this. I have seen him go through many scenes of storm and difficulty ; I have watched him aIL through the dread and hostile struggle over coercion; and.for the first time I saw him lose nerve and courage and all readiness on this occasion. When Sir William Harcourt sat down he rose. He uttered only a sentence. But it was certainly a significant sentence. He denied that Sir William Harcourt had accurately described ‘my share ’ in the knifing of Mr Courtney. There was an unmistakable emphasis on the ‘ my.' What does it mean ?" mr balfour’s strange case. Amongst Tories as well as Liberals the question “ Wbat has come to Balfour ?" is the most urgent of the hour. The general impression seems to be that he has not got over the influenza, and that his health is so broken he has lost courage for his work and may have to take a long holiday. We know too the alliance with Mr Chamberlain is strained to breaking point, in fact the Spectator this week threatens that he also may in disgust throw up public life. BITS OF PEEL. Mr Peel is said to have given his successor the same advice which Mr Brand give him when he took the chair. “ You’ll make," said the ex-Speaker, “ errors like other people no doubt— humanum est—but whatever you say mind you stick to it ." During the period when the Commons ivere utterly disorganised by Irish obstruction, it was assumed Mr Speaker must be personally on bad terms with Parnell, Biggar and Co., but this was not so. He had one private “ brush," and one only with Mr Parnell. The Irish leader had been extra-adventurous, and the Chair had interfered. The incident being over Mr Parnell was passing Mr Peel’s seat later in the evening, and said as he walked by, “I think, Mr Speaker, that you dealt excessively hardly with me just now." Mr Peel drew himself up and his eyes blazed, “ How dare you, sir," he cried, “ how dare you address such remarks to me." Parnell, surprised, walked away, but ever after in private spoke with great respect to Mr Peel.